


Essential Status Removed

by Believerindaydreams (deepandlovelydark)



Series: Raging against the machine [4]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Lonesome Road DLC, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:35:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 8,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29052228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/Believerindaydreams
Summary: The Second Battle of Hoover Dam is over. Conclusively.If you thought that ended things, Benny Gecko has a bridge he'd like to sell you.
Relationships: Benny (Fallout)/Arcade Gannon
Series: Raging against the machine [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2100771
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	1. hard life, wherever you go

He won't mention it to Arcade, because it sounds crazy; but Benny would swear the city tells him what happened before Mr New Vegas does.

This Strip's his self-chosen home, has awoken and fulfilled his highest ambitions and lowest failures, her cry of fear thrums through his bones. He flees to the bathroom, half-drowns in sweet healing water just to convince himself he's alive.

When he gets back, the news has come through officially, and his little band of refugees are looking at each other ashen-faced.

"She did it," Arcade says, pale and drawn. "Exactly like she always swore she would."

"I never really believed her," Cass says, the whiskey bottle in her hand for once forgotten. "Who tries to encourage a slave rebellion by kicking the ass of the one faction with enough power to help out?"

"Someone who sees that she needs to command absolute respect, before she can do what she wants," Veronica says in hushed tones. She starts packing stray Fancy Lad boxes away, haphazardly. "I have to get home to the Sierra Madre. If any of you want sanctuary- well, that's about as safe as you'll get in the Mojave now, I suppose."

"Thanks, but I have other plans," Cass says, stroking the stock of her rifle with ferocious love. "Time I went down to Camp McCarran and enlisted. I never really saw myself as the patriotic type, but- we have to hold the line at the Mojave Outpost. Take care of yourselves, all of you."

"MARCUS WILL NEED TO KNOW," Lily booms. "TIME FOR GRANDMA TO GO HOME AND BAKE COOKIES."

"Please, all of you...stay safe," Arcade says, his voice cracking. "Good luck."

There's more than that, hugs, tears, good wishes, but it's all chaff on the wind now. Reality doesn't start again until the last one disappears into the elevator, leaving him and Arcade alone.

"I have to get to the Enclave bunker. If anyone...if anyone made it out alive, they'll be there. I have to know if I'm alone now."

"Not while I'm around you're not."

"You really do think it works like that...don't you have a city to tend? Alliances to keep up, trying to negotiate the best terms for New Vegas you can?"

"...Arcade. I said once, I didn't love you enough to sell out this city on your behalf. It's the other way around now. Where you go, I'll go."

He can't stay here. He might have planned every stroke, contingencies, protection; but the New Vegas that will have to whore herself to the Legion for survival is not a place he wants to see. The city he knows will go down in fire; and without it, all he has is the six feet of modest doctor before him.

"That," Arcade murmurs, nuzzling his hair, "is certainly a sane and in no way disproportionate response to the situation."

"The Legion taking over the Mojave, you think it's possible to have a sane response to thar?"

"...put that way, not in the least."


	2. Give me your answer

"Just the two of us left, now." Daisy's crying outright, too loud a sound in the silent Enclave bunker. "They even got my Vertibird. Where that damfool bomber even came from, I wish I knew-"

It feels, Benny thinks, slightly obscene for him to be here watching this; and Arcade apparently agrees. He gestures to Benny, with the hand that isn't holding Daisy close: out now, please.

Out he goes, to the pine trees and mountain air and squashed mantises. It doesn't look like it's under the Legion's sway. Not yet.

Arcade comes up a long time later, alone.

"Is she all right?"

"As though anybody is- I'm sorry. You don't deserve my sarcasm right now. She's as okay as possible, under the circumstances, and she's going home to Novac. They'll be able to use her in the militia there, she won't be left alone."

"Maybe you want to go with her."

Arcade breathes out, takes his hand. "I think we both know where this is going. Even if she takes us both down."

"The Courier."

"The Courier."

Benny nods, switches off his portable radio. "So far, no movement along 95. The Legion army has been chasing after the NCR retreat, report has it that Nipton is in flames. That little band of Powder Gangers who were making something of themselves were all crucified."

"...doesn't seem real," Arcade mutters. "We can't let it end like this. By the way- Daisy wants to know if you're interested in her power armor. Says that if you're watching my back, she'd rather you have it than keep it herself."

"You'd really trust me with that? Honest to goodness?" Sweet rads, things have changed since the days he could roam around the Mojave in his lucky suit. Not for the better.

"I can't think of anyone who deserves to wear it more," Arcade says, a smile on his lips that takes Benny's breath away.

"I'll take it. And I'll try not to break it and get court-martialed."

"I was kidding about that. Sort of."


	3. If you're cruel, you can be kind

"Too bad you didn't finish the job," Trudy says, at the Goodsprings bar. "I think we'd all have been grateful if you had."

"It wasn't for lack of trying," Benny says, sipping his sarsaparilla. This is maybe the last drink anyone will be served in this bar, the whole town's packing up. Some fleeing north to New Vegas and safety, other hardy souls headed to Primm to join the NCR forces there. Another casualty of the war.

"Be sure and get her for good this time, then," Trudy says. "You need any supplies? Might be the last chance you have, the road you're on."

He doesn't really need it- back in New Vegas he stocked up on everything from chems to purified water, ready for a long haul- but Arcade is fond of Nuka-Cola. Might as well buy out her supply.

"Anywhere we can sleep tonight? Walls and a cot would do."

"There's an abandoned gas station up the hill. I don't think anyone has been there since Ringo disappeared."

"Thanks."

***

Ringo turns out to be a corpse. Benny hauls him out of the gas station, tidies up a little bit- the niceties, they're important. And he never had quite lost his reverence for buildings.

Arcade shows up in good time, looking unusually embarrassed. "You know, one minute I'm talking shop with this town's dear old family doctor and the next he asks if I'd like to use his chemistry set? I don't even know what I'm going to do with this much psycho, between this and that trip to Gomorrah."

"Keep it for when the fighting starts." There is only one bed, a mattress dragged behind the counter. Oh well, they'll manage. "We should talk about what our plan actually is. When we find her."

"...I have to admit, for once my decision making process didn't get any further then get in and dispatch her. We'll be in the middle of a Legion camp after having killed their commander, I don't think anyone would give us odds on survival back in New Vegas."

"Then maybe we're looking at the situation wrong." He hands Arcade one of the Nuka-Colas, opens another himself. "Say- say that for once, we take everything she's told us at face value. That her priority is overhauling the Legion to be, somehow, less terrible. She'd still have to continue the NCR pursuit if she wants to maintain any kind of credibility as a commander."

Arcade frowns at his soda, takes a very undignified slurp. "At least up to the Mojave Outpost, I agree. If she picks a battle there, she's in it for conquest, and we might as well forget about her being reasonable."

"If she doesn't, though, then it's up the road through Primm and yonder to New Vegas. Pincer off the Mojave, gobble it up at leisure."

"Not really sure where you're going with this now."

"That we might be best served just by staying in this town right here, and sort of...wait for the Legion to occupy it. We'll have time to set up traps, figure out how to hide ourselves, all that kind of thing. It could work out."

"...huh. She did make it pretty clear she wanted New Vegas, I guess that could work."

So they stay. Spend a few days in the silent town planning, arranging, plotting. Setting up traps enough for any number of Legionnaires.

Which makes it rather a pity they have to abandon it all, when word comes that the Courier has driven a whole army into the hell of the Divide.


	4. To the heartland of the winter

"Thing I've always wanted to know," Benny says, not troubling to keep his voice down too low. "Does the Wasteland just produce town drunks like it does yucca and cazadors, or is it some kind of job they get paid caps for?"

This is such a waste of time. Primm is too far east of where the action is, and just because it's gonna be their last stop for clean beds and running water for a while doesn't make this sensible. Arcade had insisted, though.

"It helps to get a good night's rest, before you go on the run," and the dead calm with which he'd said it had been far too vivid a reminder that now isn't even the first time Arcade has gone through this shit. His pre-Follower days isn't the kind of subject his lover enjoys for pillow talk.

"The Bull, chasing the Bear...out to cut the arteries, strike at the heart."

Pillow talk right now would be great, actually, given that it's half-past two in the morning and nobody is left in this casino except them and this drunk and the robot in a cowboy hat serving cheap drinks. Way too many drinks, actually. The way this is going they'll get started tomorrow around sunset.

Well, maybe that's not the worst thing. For Arcade to have consumed quite so many atomic cocktails as he has this evening, his lover is having an exceptionally bad case of nerves.

"I'm not asking you about the animals," Arcade says, and hiccups. "I want to know about the graffiti on the Hopeville gate. Did you put it there or not?"

They had actually been at the edge of the ridge and then turned back. Benny frowns, tries to remember through a beer haze what it was written there. He hadn't noticed anything special, but admittedly his attention had been a little subpar. Six hours of power armor training or not, getting to grips with Daisy's cast-offs is going to take time they don't actually have, he might have to revert to recon.

"A way of life that bridged the gap," the drunk intones, his deep voice husky with liquor and possibly sentiment. "Remember old friends, dear…"

Arcade slaps his shot glass down so hard that lukewarm ice splatters across the table. "But who asked you to write it there?"

"A courier. Knew what he wanted. Takes one to know one, he had his heart mapped out before the Bull ever came. Charging down into the valley, forgotten to the Mojave."

"Was his name Orion Moreno?"

The drunk gazes at them, very steadily; and Benny gets the sudden uncomfortable impression that neither of them are holding their liquor quite as well as this man. "The only man who made that journey, the lifeline of the Divide."

"How long ago did you write it," Arcade asks, in a whisper that sounds like it wants to scream.

The drunk downs the last of his drink. "The day the Bull crossed the Rubicon. No more answers from me. You'll only find more by walking that lonesome road."

His exit, duster fluttering in the dry breeze of a Mojave night, is admittedly a damn impressive thing.

Benny toys with his empty beer bottle, lets it smash to the floor. "I'm gonna prove that is bullshit on so many levels. Not least you walking it alone. You hear me, Arcade?"

On closer inspection, it turns out his lover is passed out dead drunk; but he'd like to think the sentiment made it through regardless.


	5. Charcoal burning everywhere

All the Primm locals think the Bison Steve hotel is haunted turf for some reason, which is good, because if they were having this discussion anywhere near other people they would definitely get overheard. Too much volume.

"All I'm saying is, you didn't ever mention your Enclave pal was a courier, and that would have been nice to know sooner!"

"I thought he was dead, how would that information have been relevant? When the fucking Legion thinks someone is kaput, they usually are- do you want me to give you the life biographies of everyone I've known who's died? Do you even know how long that would take?"

Benny flinches, because it seems like a faster way of bringing Arcade to his senses than any actual words, and he's right. His lover stops tightening the strap on his duffle bag, breathes hard.

"We don't have to do this," Benny says into the abrupt silence. "Going home is an option. Legion or no Legion, you did fall for one of the only guys in the Mojave with enough caps, connections, and plain muscle at his command to tackle whatever Caesar thinks up- I know none of this is what you wanted, but we can make do. Hell, ask me to move the whole Followers operation into the Strip if you want. I can make that happen. There are other choices."

"Benny, if it was anybody else, literally anybody else, I would leave it be. But Moreno is Enclave. If I walked away now, if I let him do whatever he's planning to pull off with pre-war tech, I would...I would deserve every mot of the anathema that could ever be thrown at me just because of my background."

"I'd say you are taking way too much responsibility for the world on your shoulders, but that's every Follower in existence, isn't it?"

That actually startles a laugh out of Arcade, a reassuring sight these days. "Somebody has to."

"That's exactly the attitude that got Navarro into trouble in the first place," he can't help retorting.

"Do you want to go back? Let me finish this crazed showdown by myself?"

"Hell no. You think I went to all this trouble saving New Vegas' butt to miss out on whatever this action is? If this is where the game's hot, I want a stake."

"But- you just asked if I wanted to go back-"

"Didn't say I would, did I? I could go by myself."

"Oh, _that's_ not going to happen."

***

They do get off to a late start next day, but at least it's still light. To pass the time while walking, Benny starts counting Legion corpses.

Three or four by the NCR outpost, maybe advance scouts whose failure to return established the route. Coyote packs are thriving on fresh meat. A couple bodies whose proximity to deceased ghouls makes clear how they snuffed it.

"NCR soldiers take care of their own, that's one thing you can't fault them for," Arcade says. "Even their dead."

"Might be a good thing the Legion doesn't," Benny hears himself say, trying to make a joke out of everything. "They say long pig gives you brain rot."

Arcade pulls a face and doesn't talk to him for another hour.

By then, they're as far west as they'd reached before, sunset glimmering off the scrap iron gate. Arcade holds his breath as they pass through.

It's peaceful on the other side, though. Same old Mojave rock, same worn and twisted metal. An abandoned gun, a half-empty flask of dirty water. Searching around, Benny even finds a stash of Jet probably confiscated off some poor soldier.

What he is not doing is looking down into the valley that sprawls ahead, because if it's deep enough that nobody can get a good shot at them, it's deep enough he doesn't want to see it. Fear of heights might not be the worst part of a crucifixion, but he's no different than most of the Boot Riders, feeling like just being up this high is a mistake waiting to happen.

"There really is only the one way forward, I think," Arcade says eventually- he's been searching a trifle more diligently. "Go in the bunker here, find any other exits...and hope the Legion isn't leaving behind any patrols to protect their supply line."

"That's what's wrong with this picture," Benny says slowly. "Where the hell are their logistics, why isn't there backup stretching all the way to Primm? On a ten-man raid after brahmin, I'd still have kept a couple out of the action with water and healing powder on hand."

"Maybe they planned to live off the land."

"In the Divide? Mr New Vegas' nuclear winterland?"

"Or maybe," Arcade says, and his voice is starting to tremble now, "it just didn't matter to a certain courier we know. Into the valley of death..."

He's pointing into the distance, and Benny swallows back bile to look down, all the way. Red is scattered across the distant rocks below. Like blood. Like Legion armor.

His count of corpses is suddenly too high even to envision.

"Who would...even as much as she hates the Legion, how many lives did she wipe out for this? Who needs this much revenge?"

Arcade's response is a long time coming, and when it does it isn't verbal; just a hand, wrapped around his own.

Comes as a surprise, that his are clenched into fists.


	6. A lot of what it takes to get along

Even living in New Vegas' nicest casino has never really brought home to Benny the sheer wealth of the old world, the way Hopeville does.

It's been picked over by at least two or three armies and if the Courier was planning to kill all her men, apparently it still wasn't for lack of supplies. There are chems and stimpacks and ammo and food and so, so many guns, he loads up his pack with them at first. Then starts discarding all but the ones worth over a thousand caps.

Then, a few hours in and too many overburdened moments later, realises he couldn't care less anymore. 

"And this is with power armor," he mutters. "No wonder there's still so much left to scavenge, two hundred years on…"

"Wait until we find a commissary. You'll be delighted by their output," Arcade mutters. "I'm taken aback by how nostalgic this is."

"Gonna hope you mean the surroundings and not the infinite number of corpses."

"Uh. Yes."

There are close, bloodstained buildings aplenty, but they find a cosy courtyard protected by a sturdy gate that's not only intact but locked- a reassuring sign, if any natural predators are left alive they clearly can't figure it out. L-shaped means the only real risk would be snipers shooting straight down from a rooftop, and that isn't Legion style.

"Camp here, do you think? A mattress and everything, I think some prospectors found it a safe spot."

"Suppose they want it back. And it's early yet."

Benny kneels awkwardly down to the fire pit, swipes a glove through the ash and licks it. "Nah. This has been dead so long it's on ice, whoever left here wasn't planning on coming back. A bit more sleep than you need is plenty better than trying to shoot in a deprivation fog."

"I'm just- less patient than usual, I suppose. I have questions and Moreno has answers."

"Slow down, cupcake. Assassinations aren't your field and you know it."

Arcade blinks, starts unpacking his duffle. "I hesitate to ask whether it happens to be yours."

It comes to the tip of his tongue to be flippant about it, but- this is Arcade. He lets the silence drag on and tries to remember how to undo the power armor catch.

"No," his lover says, watching him. "Don't do that, not in the field."

"How would anybody be expected to sleep in this? It's worse than a tux!"

"You get used to it. I was fourteen when I learned."

Benny gives up, sets about prepping a fire. At least all those Dandy Apple boxes can be put to good use.

"Please don't do that. This isn't the Mojave, and we don't want to be noticed."

"Am I going to have any fun on this trip?"

He takes the point though- warmth isn't a priority with heated power armor, it just would have been friendly. And the MREs he's been collecting are self-heating, it turns out- was there no end to pre-war decadence?

"Admittedly, I am starting to regret this choice of armor," Arcade mutters, sticking a spork into his own meal. "Yes, it's practically indestructible compared to anything the Legion can throw at it, but- the more I wear it the more I feel like something I'm not."

"You mean, pretending to be something you're not."

"If I had meant that...never mind."

Somewhere in that ton of hydraulics and metal, Benny reminds himself, is a soft Followers doctor who he fell in love with. It just isn't easy, when they can't even touch each other.

"Do you feel something? Some kind of vibration?"

"Now you mention it," Arcade says. "Yes. I can't imagine what-"

Benny screams, as the ground gives way beneath him.

It isn't a long fall, three or four feet maybe, but even with the suit's servos compensating it knocks the wind out of him, and then he's being savaged. Violent shapes made of dark and light together, as though somebody ripped a piece of night sky from the heavens and made them flesh-

he's stubborn about using Maria, easy ammo and portability outweighs firepower for him, but she isn't doing a thing to help now. The suit is throwing auto-inject stimpaks at him already-

and then the entire world explodes. When the dust settles, he's lying in an even deeper hole with starry corpses draped across him.

"Benny? Are you all right? Sorry about the grenade."

"You dropped a fucking grenade on me?"

"Believe me, I know what these suits can take and that was much less of a risk than...whatever those creatures were. I'm more worried about your sight and hearing." Arcade leans over the edge of the hole, helps him crawl out.

"Both seem to still be functioning, so there's that. Uh...I guess you were right about staying in the suit."

He gets a rather bitter version of Arcade's usual laugh. "I wish I wasn't."

***

Aside from that incident, though, their progress is alarmingly uninterrupted.

There are more dead star creatures. Corpses in Legion armor. And then there are...others. Ravaged bodies with no skin or fat left, just exposed raw muscle.

"If I had to guess, I might say it's some form of ghoulification," Arcade says, any horror buried beneath his practiced doctor's eye. "Exposure to something here in the Divide, whatever that could possibly be."

Benny shudders, suddenly grateful for the constrictive weight of power armor protecting him. Up to now they've both wanted to see each other enough to pass on full coverage, but they don't take their helmets off after that.

There is a highway overpass littered with dead Deathclaws, and far more dead Legion. He cannot imagine what it would be like, to have trudged this far through starscreams and red ghouls, only to have one's last moment be the rage of the Mojave's nastiest predator. Maybe helping to take one down was enough for them. Maybe they didn't die thinking their lives were given to futility.

Nothing has been left alive to bar their passage.

A little bit of madness is running around his skull now, the Courier's song, the one on her breath as he'd fired Maria and put the dirt of the grave in her mouth.

_I know what it's like to be dead._

***

"Ralphie the robot! I used to watch this serial. When I was very young, back in Navarro."

Benny looks at the poster, a frankly horrifying image that manages to make a dried up old general appear to be sharing a skull with an ingratiating youngster. "I'm sorry for you."

"Aw, it wasn't that bad. One of the few Vault-Tec programs that actually dared to suggest the post-apocalyptic wasteland might be survivable, even if they did shoot in the same quarry week after week." Arcade detaches the ancient paper from the wall with surprising delicacy, rolls it up to stow away. "This is going on our wall at the Tops when we get home."

Just the way he says that, suggesting a future for them, is like the taste of purified water after deprivation- just a little longer, a little more effort. Benny crouches down with some trouble, picks up an abandoned holotape. "Then maybe this is a trailer? I'll play it on my Pip-Boy, we'll see."

It isn't. It's the recording of an old man's ramblings about the Divide. Talking about symbols, hope, the Enclave's successor.

"That's Moreno," Arcade says quietly. "I hadn't thought he still had it in him, to be so happy about anything."

Benny looks around at the radioactive battlefield, the broken predators. "He fell in love with this place?"

"Shhh."

A new voice breaks in, an appallingly familiar one. "I got no time for triviality."

That's their courier. Unfortunately, that's also where the holotape gives out.

Arcade's familiar neck rub gesture results in him thwacking the back of his helmet with a heavy gloved hand. He splutters in irritation. "So the two of them know each other. Or knew."

"Doesn't leave us much the wiser about their intent."

"This is starting to make some kind of sense... maybe there's something left here in the ruins. Something precious that was hidden away for safety." The ache of suppressed longing in Arcade's voice is so palpable, it hurts. " _Latet enim veritas, sed nihil pretiosius veritate_. Nothing more beautiful than truth, even disguised."

Benny chews his lip, relieved that the helmet is hiding his expression. He can just see how badly this is going to develop, but never mind, let it play out.

He'd rather watch the Divide take his lover's hope away, then have to do it himself.


	7. Land of hope and glory

The Legion army, when they do catch up with it, is still sizable; but there's no mistaking the Courier.

Apparently there's no mistaking two men in Enclave armor, either. So much for sneaking.

"You took your time getting here," she says to Arcade. "I was starting to think that drunk in Primm had forgotten to paint the graffiti I paid him for."

"I can't express how delighted I am at having inconvenienced you. Oh wait, I can. _Honor sequitir fugientem_ …"

Benny, meanwhile, is doing sums. These aren't regular Mojave soldiers they're dealing with now, but the hardened core of Caesar's finest, equipped with massive blades and the best of equipment from a pre-war military installation. Survivors of a trial by fire. 

They could get out of this, given enough Turbo and a pinch of luck. Frontal assault, they'll be alive just long enough to bleed out.

"...regardless of that fact, you're where you need to be now." The courier reaches up, plucks something unspeakable from the fronds of her battle robot. It beeps, flutters in the air. "It comes to this, Moreno warned me that the nuclear silo base here will automatically disable and confiscate any Eyebots on the grounds of being a security risk. Get in there and turn off the security inhibitors so we can finish this once and for all."

"...excuse me, but finish what? What could possibly possess me to give you access to any more tools of death?"

The courier sighs. "Moreno said you might be like this. Watch this."

She extracts a grenade from her pocket, a small one. Doesn't look much different than a regular flash bang, a noise and a cloud of red dust.

"I'm not impressed," Benny says after a moment.

"Ever been to the Sierra Madre? Seen the cloud there? This is a special concentrated sample of it I had whipped up...it dissolves quickly in air, and it doesn't have much range. But for power armor suits? Corrodes the works, makes it impossible to get out without highly specialized help." 

He has, Benny figures, nothing to lose by making a fool of himself trying to pry this helmet off, pulling at the catches. Nothing helps. Daisy's favor is suddenly a prison.

"I'm not entirely sure whether the more...interesting attributes of ghost people will transfer over, the organ liquidation and insanity and all that. So if I were you, I'd get started and come back quickly."

"Stay here," Arcade says, and takes off at a speed Benny honestly hadn't thought you could achieve with power armor.

As if.

***

Getting to the security console in question takes about ten minutes, mercifully.

The cloud's already beginning its work, though; Benny can feel the too familiar lick of acidity burning at his hands and neck. If that grenade's effect had gone any higher- if they can't get out of these soon- 

"When we get back," Arcade says, pounding on the Robco terminal. "We ask her to open your suit first. I'm used to these things, you aren't."

There's nothing wrong with what he's saying; it's the hesitant awkwardness that gives him away, all his practice and the doctor still doesn't know how to lie. "You're not going to let them. You're going to try to take down that courier."

"Malfunctioning or not, I know how to fight in this suit, and we don't stand a chance killing her without some advantage. Get back to Primm, let the NCR know that an army really has made it through the Divide-"

"You're talking about dying! Or worse!" The horrifying vitality of those Sierra ghosts, shrugging off everything but a limb sliced off, a decapitation- magnify that times a thousand, for power armor- 

"Benny, I helped her get here. If I have to die to stop her getting farther, it's only fair. Please don't...don't let me die thinking I sucked you into this, too."

"Excuse me, which one of us shot this woman and dumped her in a grave in Goodsprings?" If he could see Arcade, touch him. If he was wearing his lucky suit and not all this rotten armor, if he was just a little more persuasive. 

The choked sound his lover makes is something like a laugh. Best to press the point. "Here's something. Who holds up an entire army, just for the sake of her pet robot?"

"She likes that Eyebot, we know that already."

"Sure, but maybe there's more than that- she's a robot herself, maybe there's something she needs it to do. Maybe it's a backup function- we can't risk even the chance of her downloading to somewhere else and trying again. You take her, I'll take her sidekick."

It's been ages since he improvised a line of absolute nonsense like this, tap dancing out words that surprise him as much as his listener, and all for an end that would have seemed the height of madness to him, once. If Arcade isn't getting out of this, he doesn't want to either.

"...huh. I hadn't even thought of that. In that case," Arcade says, and stops typing. "Might as well forget about this, then. Security protocols must be here for a reason, if I'm not trying to save your life I should put them back up-"

"I think you want to leave it be, Arcade Gannon."

Even without having heard the voice on the holotape earlier, Benny thinks, he would have guessed who this was. There can't be that many more suits of Enclave armor left, or people to wear them.

"Hello, Orion," Arcade says. 

Despite- well, everything, there's a gentle patience to his lover's tone. Maybe it's childhood fondness, maybe it's the Follower kindness, hard to say. 

"Been a long time...I've wondered, whether we'd be on the same side in the end."

"I'd have to know which that was, first." It ought to be possible to say that sarcastically, but it doesn't sound like Arcade means it that way. Goddamn but this would be easier if he had a face to read, body language even.

All that Orion is giving away, for instance, is a figure in power armor, and- no, it isn't identical. There's traces of corrosive at the joints, like on theirs but redder, etchings in the metal. Dust caught on the catches, as though he's been in there a long time.

His skin crawls.

"I would have said right here, once. The Divide, the home I protected with a courier's resolve, a path that I swore never to abandon. And then the NCR took it away from me, a second chance gone up in fire...the world died for me after that. Did the courier come with you, like she said?"

"Brought a whole Legion army to your doorstep," Arcade says shortly. "Or what's left of one."

Orion Moreno has an old man's laugh, wheezing and bubbling. "I never would have credited it. Knew she was strong to make it here the first time, but to do what I asked...well. She asked for a display of good old-fashioned American rocketry, and by god she'll get it."

"Orion, no. Running back over the same worn ground, that won't win us anything." No desperation in Arcade's voice, no fear, no sadness. As calmly as he nags about proper use of stimpaks or an overdose of chems. "That's not why I came."

"You came here with the courier, with an army, aren't you here to take down the NCR? Don't tell me they broke you down so as to support their lies."

"Not that either...Orion, my home is New Vegas, and it has been for a long time. We can stay independent. Under our own control. But no more nukes."

"Thought that myself, once." The rusted helmet creaks when Orion shakes it. "Maybe it can be, when the NCR goes down. You look after your strays and drop-outs in peace then, Arcade. Daisy...you fly that Vertibird of yours, look after the kid. I'll be staying on here."

"Did you...are you even able to leave that suit, any more?" Arcade's clinical certainty is giving way to revulsion. Covering for his silence, Benny assumes.

Another harsh wheeze of amusement. "Why would I want to? I'll guard the last of American resolve for as long as she needs me…and thanks to the courier, that might be a very long time. Go and tell her, the missiles are ready whenever she wants 'em."

Arcade turns away. Turns back. Starts to fire.

It's a fair fight and it isn't. For his age, Orion is far too agile, quick off the mark with his weaponry, experienced at fighting in ways that a Followers doctor and a casino boss can only dream of. It's obvious that Arcade's expertise with power armor doesn't hold much water, compared to a real master of the craft. Benny can't even touch him with Maria.

But he survived every horror of the Sierra Madre, and he didn't leave empty handed.

The shriek of the cosmic knife, as it slices through the junction between hand and arm, is matched only by Orion's scream. It's not quite like cutting into a ghost, with a quick and merciful death; but the liquid pooling out of the suit is no longer the color of blood. 

Benny hacks away until the screaming stops, then cuts away his own suit, every piece of metal falling away a little more like freedom. Flakes of corrosive falling away from his body, chemical burns they don't even have time to worry about. He gestures to Arcade when he's done, finds the going harder now. Guaranteed warranty or not, cutting through three suits of power armor probably was too much to ask of one knife.

The neck, very delicately, to get that goddamn helmet off. Arms, legs, torso- he's nearly done when the blade finally shatters, leaving Arcade's left hand trapped in a gauntlet that's too heavy to lift, without its whizzing servos.

His lover is gasping in pain now, angry red fissures trailing up the arm. "There's a bonesaw in my medical kit- I can barely feel it anymore, once the nerves go it's worse than useless-"

No. No, no, no- wait.

"Hang on," Benny says, exuding all the confidence he knows how. Which is considerable. "My vial of lube. Never leave home without it."

"You really think that's going to- oh, futue te ipsi- that hurts…"

It takes all he's got left, but Arcade's hand comes out in the end. Filthy, sodden, but the fingers still bend and that's all that matters.

They tear away scraps of Cloud-stiffened clothing, clean up with all the water from Benny's pack- there's Nuka-Cola to drink if they're thirsty, it's more important to get off as much of the contamination as they can. The process is too messy and too hurried to be wholly enjoyable, but at least they have each other back now, 

"I've got my old recon armor, but none for you...sorry I wasn't quite that much of a packrat."

"No harm done, it's lucky you're that much of a one as is. Have you been carrying that knife around since we left the Sierra Madre?"

"Thought it might be nice to have a holdout weapon for melee, in case I ever needed something quieter than Maria."

"...huh. Well, in the absence of anything better, I might as well put my Followers coat back on. Stains and all."

"Come to think of it, I think I saw some US Army armor in a locker back there."

"In the absence of anything better," Arcade repeats, looking enormously relieved once he's slipped into the reinforced fabric. 

Benny kisses him, because he can now. "Baby, cupcake, you make me so glad to swing both ways."

Arcade looks down at his hand, lets out a snort. "Believe me, I don't think I've ever been so relieved about being gay."


	8. Making me feel like I've never been...

On second thought, seeing as he's going to die, he'd rather have worn his lucky suit. It's the aesthetic of the thing.

Some time between Arcade switching off the Eyebot security and them leaving Orion's death chamber, the Courier must have worked out that she was in the clear. They don't have much of a choice accompanying her down to the launch chamber, given the four assassins she's brought along.

Funny how everything has looped around like this, in the end.

"To reiterate: why, exactly, am I not dead? You can't possibly think I'll help you now."

Benny all but grinds his teeth. It wouldn't kill his lover to be a little more subtle. Or less death-seeking.

"Insurance. In case I need to, who knows, pull the same kind of trick as I did at that vault where somebody has to die just to open the door. And I have a few questions- how did you get out of the suits?"

"Sierra Madre kitchenware," Benny says shortly. "I take it you didn't expect that."

"Hmm. No, thought you'd be stuck that way. Is Orion dead?"

Arcade catches his eye, mouths something in disbelief- _she was lying?_

Benny rolls his eyes. "As a Dandy Apple. I'm sure you'll shed many tears."

"...I might. He gave me means, as the Legion gave me motive."

Arcade immediately starts quarreling philosophy with her, while Benny considers their opponents. Assassins, but not human anymore. They have the pained, muscled appearance of those dead ghouls.

It's starting to look like even if they survived the missile launch, they couldn't get out of the valley alive. Only the courier's perfect robotic body remains untouched by the horrors outside.

He closes his eyes for a moment, to offer up his soul to whoever might want it.

"-no, I don't think individuals matter, I think forces matter," the Courier is saying, fast and almost angrily. "Look. Say Benny pulls off that plan he's obviously thinking, Goodsprings but for real this time. I die, you two die, everyone here dies. So what? You think that'll stop my faithful out there from getting the missiles launched eventually? Flagstaff ends whether I have anything to do with it or not."

"Flagstaff- but Orion said you planned to target the NCR."

"Orion was a useful idiot who I was going to have to take down if you hadn't. Of course I don't want to nuke the NCR. They might be bastards, but they aren't slave-holding bastards."

"Are you guys listening to this?" Benny says to one of the assassins. Just for curiosity's sake. 

"We don't follow the Legion any longer. We follow her, the cunning fox, Joshua Graham's slayer, the lady in red. To the ends of the earth, if she asked it. To the death."

The courier's smile is thin and strained. "Just like in life, I have groupies."

"... but you don't need to destroy Flagstaff," Arcade says, weariness etched into every word. "You're in charge of the Legion's military now, you could end it all today if you wanted-"

"I want to salt the earth there," the Courier says, stopping short in her tracks. "I want to bomb that haven of slave-traders until it's just a name on the wind, a horror that nobody will ever dare dream about committing again. I want everyone to know that just breathing the same air as slavers will bring down a retribution of fire, and everything I have done from selling you out to obliterating an NCR army has been in service of this one simple goal. Do you understand any of this?"

"Children. Slaves. Innocents, in the places you're about to destroy."

"Once upon a time," the Courier says, sounding almost as exhausted as Arcade now. "Once upon a time, there was a robot who got lost on her courier run between Primm and Nipton. She met a band of plucky human scientists, who sheltered her and told her about life and science and the Mojave, and they were all very happy together, until the day she stumbled across an entire concentration camp. The scientists had forgotten about it."

"Um," Benny says, once the silence has gone on too long, and Arcade is still speechless.

"She freed the ghouls of their bomb collars. She murdered every last scientist, as painfully as she knew how. And she promised herself," the Courier says, soft words from her soft actress face, "that the next time she saw anyone else who could not only commit atrocities but forget them, she would take them down like the trash they are."

There have to be Follower words about this, Benny is positive, but whatever they are, Arcade isn't saying them.

They walk into the heart of the missile silo, with nothing left to stop them.


	9. It's a sin to tell a lie

So your name is Arcade Gannon, and you're about to die, but that's not important right now.

What is important is whether you plan to take anyone else down with you, because a whole city of people you've never seen is riding on that.

The Courier...maybe she isn't wrong. You yourself have just killed one of the men who bottle-fed and raised and protected you, for the sake of what you'd estimate as a half hour's worth of delay on the obliteration of Flagstaff. For a robot, it's ironic that she isn't quite so good at science as you are, but anybody with that many issues of Programmer's Digest will get there in the end. She types so quickly, the screen glows green and black at once.

What if you maintained your silence, let events unfold, are you helping to stop a catastrophe or starting one. She's raised an arguable moral position. You don't have time to sit down and reason it out.

Your lover nudges your side, insistently. You turn.

There's tears dripping down his silly round face, terror in his dark eyes. "Do something smart," he whispers. "Stop her."

You're Enclave. You wouldn't know what a working moral compass was if it hit you in the face and bounced off your glasses.

So. You'll just have to hope that your lover is in the right.

***  
"Well, since this looks like it'll take a while…" Arcade starts. "Hey, ED-E, I have something to show you."

"Knew you'd get along if you put that big brain of yours to it," the Courier says, almost happily.

Arcade unrolls his Ralphie poster, to the sound of considerable electronic cooing. The Eyebot likes a thing about an Eyebot, Benny thinks disconsolately, big surprise there. How this is going to stop a missile launch escapes him.

They chatter happily about their TV show. The Courier hums an ancient tune and keeps typing. A countdown starts. 

It ends. A small ASCII animation informs them the missiles are in the air. 

Arcade is still blathering about quarries, and then in mid-sentence- "ED-E, override protocol at that console. Safety defusion, then self-destruct the missiles."

"No," the Courier says, almost provokingly amused. "He's my robot. Nobody takes him away from me."

"You always wanted to go to Navarro- ED-E, Dr Whitley didn't know it isn't there anymore. The NCR destroyed it. I was in the last group of survivors to make it out."

A pained beeping. 

"And they're all gone now. No scientists, no soldiers, nothing- I'm all that's left," Arcade says. Staring down the robot as if he plans to make out with it, Benny can't help thinking. "I didn't want to hurt you by saying it earlier, but- don't let her do this to anyone else, ED-E. I didn't want my home blown up, nobody else deserves that either."

A melancholy beeping. The Courier is starting to look concerned. "You wouldn't be alone if you hadn't shot your mentor in the face."

"He started it," Benny interjects. A lie that they would certainly not get away with for anything more sophisticated than an Eyebot, given Arcade's expression, but they mostly go by voice. "Be a hero for us, please? Just like Ralphie?"

It beeps out quickly and triumphantly, plays a blast of music as it scoots over to the launch console and starts interfacing with it.

The Courier, hands shaking, raises a gun. ED-E beeps ferociously, zaps it skidding across the floor.

Four highly trained Legion assassins are not, apparently, capable of downing a fully upgraded Eyebot, at least not when being surreptitiously undermined by two other shooters. Lucky thing he packed Stealth Boys, or he and Arcade would probably have been roasted immediately.

"She launched everything that can fly," Arcade whispers. "If ED-E can stop this now-"

A chime and an automatic voice circuit informs them that yes, the Eyebot has managed to do just that. It beeps in ecstatic triumph.

Then the damn thing blows up. Then the console it was working at. Then all the alarms go off simultaneously.

Everyone looks at the leftover warheads, the chain of explosions, and makes for the exit immediately.

***  
They try to get away, but it turns out that the Courier's army is ringing the building in a very literal fashion, so it doesn't work out. All the soldiers have to do is hold on to them until the stealth field wears off.

There are tears on the Courier's face, when they're dragged into her tent. It surprises Benny; he's read her specs, but he hadn't remembered that she could do that.

"I suppose you thought that was an appropriate moral lesson," she says to Arcade. "Taking away what I loved to make your point."

"If I could have done it without hurting him, I would have. It's just that my options were...oh, how shall I put this. Distinctly limited?"

"Didn't even think to talk me down?"

"By your own reasoning, I think that after you sold me off as a slave to do what you wanted to see done, I was absolved of needing to worry about your reaction. And you never did listen to my advice at the best of times."

"...so much for morality then," the Courier says softly. "Well. Still have brute force in my back pocket, I suppose- Benny, you know what I want now."

Maria feels all but weightless in his hand, as he gives it to her. She empties the ammo, listens to the chamber, reloads.

"You know what," she says abruptly, "I don't even care about you any more. Trying to kill me and failing is so far down the list of things the world has done to me. Arcade Gannon, on the other hand, is definitely not leaving this tent in one piece."

She hands the gun back. "So never mind what I said at Goodsprings about making you eat your own gun. Shoot him and go before I decide to blame you too."

"Why," Arcade asks, incredulously. "Why are you this sick?"

She meets his gaze. "Because having so dramatically proven your point about the importance of individuals, you get to roll with the consequences of pissing off the greatest warlord in the Mojave. Are those seriously going to be your last words?"

"You know, I had a speech all ready for the occasion, but...it doesn't matter now." Arcade reaches out; Benny feels him trace a half-circle, down his cheek and chin. "Listen, Benny, I love you a lot, and I hope you shoot her in the face. Again."

"Will do."

"Might as well," the Courier says, utterly resigned.

It is at this point that the entire tent vanishes out from above them.

The cause of which turns out to be easy to find. That old drunk from Primm is riding a Bighorner, his duster streaming in the wind, and he's looped the whole damn thing on a sword blade to trail dramatically behind him.

"Yeehaw, boys, old Ulysses is back! Down with the Bear, down with the Bull, we carve out our own symbols now!"

Cheers from the Legion soldiers.

Benny doesn't even bother looking at his lover, just grabs his hand and runs.

***

"Wait, wait, wait," Veronica says, a fortnight and a great deal of liquor later. "I was with you up to then, but the crazy old coot suddenly deciding to pitch in and help you guys out? Where does this come from?"

"Turns out," Arcade says, pouring a glass of the best Tops wine, "he was the original Legion scout who had discovered Hoover Dam, and even when he was wounded in action he was still a general favorite. Seeing the whole Legion army go in what was clearly the wrong direction worried him enough to trail after them and get the gist of things. When the Courier decided to turn them into ghouls and nuke their homes, well...while we were busy with the missiles inside, he was making a rousing speech. The marked men follow him now." 

"I guess that follows, but. The plucky Eyebot that wanted to be a tv character, you were making that up?"

Arcade points at a poster on the wall. "What self-respecting robot wouldn't like to be like that?"

"He's made me promise to ask around the vaults until I can get a complete set of holotapes," Benny says glumly.

"Okay, but...you're exaggerating about the Courier, right? I mean, I always knew she was crazy, just...not that crazy."

"Far be it from me to point out you voluntarily live in the Brotherhood," Arcade points out. "Except that you do, in fact, live in the Brotherhood."

"If anything I thought you were making her out to be a little too sympathetic, Arcade," Benny chimes in. "She tried to nuke a city and then made me point a gun at your head, you're allowed to say she's evil."

"She wasn't here to tell her side of the story. Besides which, I'm thankfully not dead, so I can cut her some rope."

"Slack," Veronica says. "I don't know why, your version makes more sense, but the expression is slack."

"Hmm. Thanks for telling me."

"So the Courier. Our number six, mover in the Mojave, what happened to her?"

"Does it really matter in the end?" Benny asks. "Isn't there something rather intriguing about leaving it open-ended, uncertain, ready for the legends?"

"Of course it matters," Veronica says impatiently. "It turns out that the Sierra Madre is awful for power armor, between one thing and another everybody just wants to go home to Hidden Valley. But we can't do that if the Courier who told us to never show our faces in the Mojave again is still alive and kicking."

"Fair enough. In that case…"

His eye falls on his lover again, as he marvels at their luck. The way everything squeaked through for them, with the narrowest of chances. They've both alive. Nobody has sacked New Vegas, nobody will, with the NCR humbled and what's left of the Legion army confined to irradiated Hopeville. 

They can finally start building that future he dreamed about so long ago, when he was just an idiot in a lucky suit who knew more about a platinum chip than was good for him. New Vegas' renaissance. Maybe get started on the Strip's first new casino since the war, he's wanted to do that for such a long time.

And somehow, Arcade Gannon has made it out unscathed; an accomplishment without which, all the rest would taste like cinders. Getting soft in his old age and he loves it.

Not too soft, though.

"In that case, since you do need to know…"

"Yes?"

Benny grins, swallows the last of his whisky chaser. "Ring-a-ding-ding, baby."


End file.
